Stray Shot Makes Mom's Nightmare Real

Nilda Vazquez had become so protective of her son, Michael, she wondered whether she was paranoid. Wednesday evening, in an agonizing instant, a stray bullet proved she was not.

Seven-year-old Michael Montoya, an "A" student and the center of his mother's life, was killed because of a petty dispute over a traffic jam he had nothing to do with. Angry words were answered not with a shout or a gesture, but with a handgun. And less than a block away, the boy was shot as he stood in his front yard in the 4100 block of West Wabansia Avenue.

On Wednesday, Chicago police were seeking a 23-year-old man for questioning in connection with the shooting. He was described as 6 feet, 2-inches tall and 170 pounds with a mustache and long, shaggy hair. He was driving a blue and gray 1985 customized Ford van with Illinois license plates VWH 146.

At the large Humboldt Park apartment where Michael lived with his mother, relatives and friends talked Thursday about how much they wanted his killer to be brought to justice. In Michael's room, wandering amid the stuffed animals and Disney characters and other artifacts of childhood, Nilda Vazquez proudly painted a verbal portrait of her son:

Michael was a 1st-grader at Salem Christian School and a member of the Awanas Club, a kind of Boy Scouts for religious study. He shared common interests with other kids his age-Nintendo and the Bulls leapt to mind-but also heard a different drum. Jazz was his favorite music.

He was a stunning boy, with dark hair, dark eyes and a sly smile he eagerly flashed whenever a camera was around. He was mature for 7, his relatives and teacher said, a product perhaps of a life spent around adults.

Michael was doted on by his grandmothers and kept on a short leash by his mother. She feared the neighborhood's gangs and the guns they carried.

"Every moment of his life, I knew where he was," said Vazquez, 26, a licensed practical nurse at Regency Nursing Centre in Niles. "His grandmother would pick him up at school and baby-sit until I got home from work. He never played outside because I know the area's so bad. I did everything that I could to keep him safe.

"Two minutes. Two minutes. He was outside last night for two minutes."

According to Grand Central Area detectives, the incident began around 6 p.m. when a westbound van stopped in the 4000 block of Wabansia. The van's driver and male passenger began talking with someone on the street, blocking at least two cars behind them.

When the van refused to move despite repeated honkings, the other cars drove around it. As a Buick Regal passed by, at least one of its occupants shouted something to the van's driver. The man responded by drawing what police believe was a .25-caliber handgun and firing at the Buick. An errant bullet hit Michael in the back. No one else was wounded.

Michael had gone downstairs and out of the building to fetch a friend so the two could play with walkie-talkies. His mother had drilled into him the procedure to follow should trouble arise, should he ever hear something that sounded ominous.

Run home, Michael had been taught, and he followed those orders when shot.

"I heard his voice calling, `Mom! Mom!' " Vazquez said. "I yelled, `Michael, are you all right?' Then I went to the door.

"He had run up here. I opened the door and he fell in on his face. I turned him over. I thought he had tripped and cut himself. He didn't say anything. Then his eyes started turning back."

Vazquez lifted the boy-he came up to her shoulders and weighed more than 70 pounds-and raced him to a relative's car. On her way to St. Elizabeth's Hospital, where she once worked, she flagged down a police officer, who called an ambulance. Michael was taken to Children's Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:10 p.m.

"I don't think he ever knew what happened," his mother said.

In the kitchen just beyond Michael's bedroom, the boy's maternal grandmother was surrounded by relatives trying to ease her desolation. She had cared for Michael the first two years of his life while Vazquez was going to nursing school, had seen him regularly since, shuttling him back and forth to school or to Bible camp. Now she was inconsolable.

Vazquez pulled from the closet several shirts and trousers that his grandmother had recently bought. "The tags are still on them," she pointed out. "He'll never get to wear them."

Michael's father, Michael Montoya Sr., was slain in November 1985, 12 days after his son was born. He was 25 years old and used a wheelchair because of an accident. He was sitting on the front porch of his Southwest Side apartment when he was hit in the head by a bullet during a drive-by shooting.

"His mother stepped in after that and took his place for Michael," a relative said. "She was very supportive."